They put a ribbon–bleu, bien sur–on the 2025 Cannes Film Festival yesterday. As regular readers might have been triggered to remember (I can’t assume you’re as detail-obsessed as moi), I’ve got a thing for the South of France, and in particular the kind of people that get to go there these days. You should be an award-winning creative to justify being there; short of that, you’d best be world-class hot. For those of us that happen to be both, so much the better, and it is for you I have particular envy.
But in all seriousness, that’s mostly because you now have a head start on knowing what we mere mortals should ostenisbly be paying attention to as the race to Awards Season has now officially kicked off. We got a good sense of how it’s starting to shape up from VANITY FAIR’s Eve Batey:
Honorees included Brazilian actor Wagner Moura, who wasn’t at the ceremony—but was still named best actor for his role in Kleber Mendonça Filho‘s political thriller The Secret Agent. In a Cannes rarity, it also took home a second award for best director. Other winners included Iranian dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi, whose It Was Just an Accident won the festival’s top prize, the Palme d’Or, just days after distribution company Neon picked up the American rights for the film.
THE WRAP’s Steve Pond reinforced how this became a reaffirmation for those looking for hope that there’s still an appreciation for cinematic excellence and not merely franchise reinvigoration, if perhaps concentrated in the vision of one particularly discerning supplier:
Neon acquired distribution rights to the film, which now means that the company has distributed the last six consecutive Palme d’Or winners, beginning with “Parasite” in 2019 and also including “Titane,” “Triangle of Sadness,” “Anatomy of a Fall” and last year’s winner, “Anora.”
Neon came to Cannes with deals to distribute two films in the main competition, Julia Ducournau’s “Alpha” and Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value.” During the festival, it made additional deals with three more contenders, “Sirat,” “The Secret Agent” and “It Was Just an Accident.”
And as INDIE WIRE’s Anne Thompson reported, they didn’t, the real-life answer to–and far purer version of–Matt Remick, CEO Tom Quinn, didn’t stop there:
Neon came out ahead on the acquisitions derby, as MUBI’s starry $23-million pick-up “Die My Love,” from Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay, came up empty-handed. A Cannes Actress win for Jennifer Lawrence could have fueled an Oscar campaign, but that loss won’t stop MUBI from pursuing that goal.
It’s enough to make just about anyone envious. Including–apparently– some pretty awful folks, as THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS’ Jessica Schladebeck reported:
Deliberate acts of sabotage left much of southeastern France without power on the final day of the glamorous Cannes Film Festival, sparking an arson investigation ahead of closing celebrations, including the much-anticipated Palme d’Or ceremony.
Some 160,000 homes in the Alpes-Maritimes region, which includes Cannes, were affected by the sweeping blackout on Saturday, which dragged on for several hours and threatened to jeopardize the events before power was eventually restored, according to RTE, France’s electrical grid operator.
“We are looking into the likelihood of a fire being started deliberately,” said a police spokesperson for the French National Gendarmerie, adding that no arrests had yet been made.
Authorities have not yet said whether they believe the Cannes Film Festival, heralded as the most prestigious event of its kind, was the intended target of the hours-long outage.
But judging by the cloud that hung over the festivities for the week prior, that possibility can’t be dismissed. GULF TODAY provided some potentially investigatable reasons:
Amid the red carpets and parties, this year’s Cannes Festival has been politically charged, with the wars in Ukraine and Gaza as well as US President Donald Trump major talking-points. The Gaza war has been on the minds of some of the festival’s guests, with more than 900 actors and filmmakers signing an open letter denouncing “genocide” in the Palestinian territory, according to organisers. (French actor Juliette) Binoche, “Schindler’s List” star Ralph Fiennes, US indie director Jim Jarmusch and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange — in town to present a documentary he stars in — are among the signatories.